Interested in working on climate change? Think you’ll end up as researcher or activist working for a nonprofit somewhere? For as long as he can remember, Sam Arons has been interested in the environment. After two years of grad school at UC Berkeley, he sought real-world experience and naturally applied to the nonprofit jobs you’d expect. He also applied to Google.

Seven years later, he is part of a corporate team tasked with reducing Google’s carbon emissions to zero. His work has inspired similar projects at other large companies who together are demonstrating that sustainability and financial wellbeing can go hand in hand.

I caught up with Arons at Google’s San Francisco office to hear his story.